Product Description

When the citys most hated court bailiff is found murdered the young lawyer who last saw him alive tells police of a lifelong struggle between father and son. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 06/24/2008 Run time: 125 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48243 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2003-02-04
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Dutch, English, French, German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Amazon.com
Character, the 1997 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, is an Oedipal struggle both primal and epic with a Dickensian sweep and a dark Kafka-esque center. The film starts with a heated argument between two men, and when the elder is found dead with a knife in his chest the younger man is arrested and revealed to be his son. The story begins in flashback: the father, Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir from Antonia's Line), is a fearless Scrooge-like moneylender who has cold-heartedly built his fortune by collecting debts and foreclosing on the poor. His son, Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet), is the offspring of a single night's passion with his housekeeper--in an interesting twist he hounds her to marry him, and she leaves with the boy to raise him on her own. When she dies, father and son become locked in a fascinating battle: as Katadreuffe finds him calling in the law, Dreverhaven buys up his debts and attempts to drive him into bankruptcy. Katadreuffe eagerly takes up every challenge his father throws at him in a perverse show of strength and filial defiance. Adapted by first-time director Mike Van Diem from the 1938 novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk, this handsome epic is assured from the first frame, and excellent performances by Decleir (whose imposing Dreverhaven seems to tower over all by will as much as by size) and van Huet bring to life this study of two tortured psyches whose love emerges only through conflict and competition. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this grimly absorbing tale of a father and son engaged in murderous conflict has the look of a Rembrandt, full of chiaroscuro and silvery-brown hues. The film, set in Rotterdam in the twenties, brilliantly evokes a tight, confined society of burghers and the nooselike feel of their lives. Katadreuffe (Fedja Van Huet) is the illegitimate son of a hardworking mother (Betty Schuurman) and the despised town bailiff (Jan Decleir) she has refused to marry. Katadreuffe rises in a prestigious law firm, but everywhere he turns he comes up against the shadow of his father, who seems to have passed on to him aspects of his own driven, isolated character. A fascinatingly layered meditation on the limits of free will, the film is Kafkaesque in its sense of existential dread and Dickensian in its depiction of a society ruled by fear and stoicism. In Dutch. -Daphne Merkin
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Character - a few additions
A few remarks and additions to the reviews so far. - The place where the story is situated is near and in the old harbour in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). It was filmed partially on the fifth floor of an old harbour building, with additional scenes in Antwerp (if i recall it correct), in Germany and in Poland. In Rotterdam, i was part of one scene. As a professional calligrapher, i had earlier prepared several properties for the film, and then was asked to be on stage, too. Mike van Diem made a lasting impression, a friendly and capable director indeed. The hours of waiting, the minutes of shooting, resulted in a few seconds of appearance in the final version of the movie - that's obviously the way it goes. In the last half minute, the hand of Jan Decleir (seemingly - it's actually my hand) writes the signature of the testament. It was a small contribution to a masterpiece, which is strongly based on two novels of F. Bordewijk, 'Karakter' and 'Katadreuffe'. Charakter is the kind of movie that is worth to have on video. Be it for the enticing music (Paleis van Boem), be it for the convincing main characters (the divinely beautiful Tamar van den Dop, the talented Fedja van Huet, the majestic Jan Declair), or the intriguing story. Even my critical son of 19 could admit the permeating quality, which is remarkable for someone who mainly grew up with Quentin Tarantino and similar. - Having seen this film several times, the tragedy of the bailiff Dreverhaven appeared in a new light. The ruthless tyrant was deeply unsatisfied with himself, and he who punished so many, beseeched to be punished himself - the natural law of balance. Who else than his own son could be the executor, in the moment of his greatest triumph, when he achieved to be an attorney. That is where this oscar-winning movie ends... and begins.

Packs a Lot of Dramatic Punch
CHARACTER is all about tough love. Extremely tough. It is about family. In this instance, an extremely distant pair of parents and a young man seeking his identlty. It's also about great psychological drama, superior period design and unbelievably assured freshman filmmaking from director Mike Van Diem. It's also, as the title implies, about "building character." The father, Dreverhaven, has some unusual character building techniques, to put it mildly. He at one point tells the young man's mother that he will strangle 9/10s of the life out of son Jacob, but the remaining 1/10ths will make him strong. And just for good measure, he may take the last tenth as welll.
Jan Decleir, as Dreverhaven, is a revelation. He's built like Gerard Depardieu and is even more preposessing than that fine actor on screen. He would make a great Javert or Lear in some future production. Victor Löw, as Jacob's mentor and elder friend, De Gankeelar, is unlike anyone you will have seen on screen or stage. With an impossibly jutting jaw and unique mode of speech, he is the ultimate character actor. The entire cast is splendid. I'm not at all familiar with Dutch Cinema, and am not even entirely sure the term isn't an oxymoron. This film, however, can stand beside anything in contemporary cinema. Now I just have to dig up the novel by Ferdinand Borewijk, from which the movie was adapted. It's such a compelling story that I'm sure the novel will be excellent, as well.

Five Stars and counting.

BEK

Heartbreaking and Extraordinary
It's ironic that "Character" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film the same year that "Titanic" won for Best Picture. "Character" makes "Titanic" look like a grade-school production of "Gilligan's Island." One of the most powerful films I've ever seen, it was painful and difficult to watch, and absolutely brilliant. With not a false note anywhere, the epic scope of the story, the acting and the cinematography drew me in and broke my heart. Not to be missed.